UPDATES

​Have you ever answered the phone and known exactly who was calling you, while there was no way that you could have known ahead of time? Or have you randomly walked into a bookstore and without searching, walked straight to the book you had been looking for for months? Or perhaps someone entered the room, and without knowing this person, you got this funny feeling and just knew they had a major inner burden? Has that ever happened to you? When you knew that you knew but you didn't know how you knew?

​These flashes are prompted by your intuition, also known as your human intelligence system. Your human intelligence system integrates all your intellect, skills, passions, talents, sensitivities, logic, experience, memories, love, survival instinct, innate strengths, and calls upon the brain, the vagus nerve, the heart and the enteric system to find solutions to complex problems in your life. This is what helped you understand who called. This is what steered you toward the book. This is what guided you to sense this person was hurting. It wasn't coincidence, and you knew it wasn't coincidence, because coincidence feels vastly different from intuition. You know truth by the way it feels.

Often we are left to experience intuition passively; accepting it when it comes, without an ability to control it or call upon it in times of need. However, with time and dedication, you can learn how to expand it, to form an intimacy with it, to grow it, so it becomes a reliable source of knowledge you can access at any given time, to guide you through difficult phases in your life.

Where and How to Meet Your Intuition.

Here is a simple exercise to meet and build a relationship with your intuition.

​1. Take three deep breaths. Breath in such a way that your inhalation and exhalation are of the same duration. Relax your jaw, your shoulders and release the pit in your stomach. Let go of worries, hurried thinking and tension.

2. Imagine breathing in and out through your heart. Call to mind pleasant heartfelt emotions such as love, kindness and gratitude. Now think of a happy time in your life when you felt all these sensations. Open to it, let it all emerge in your mind.

3. Now bring these feelings into your heart, letting them flow through your heart. Notice the feeling you get in your heart while they move through it. This pleasant feeling is called coherence; your heart is beginning to naturally slow down and become at peace. You might sense a warmth spreading through your body. Perhaps waves are radiating from your heart. Or perhaps a golden dust is shifting and settling in the corners of your body.

4. Now see if you can describe in detail this feeling that you are experiencing. What shape does it have? What texture? What smell? What sound? What color? Does it move? Can you touch it, and if yes, what does it feel like? What else do you notice about it?

5. Then, create a safe place in your mind. That is all the way yours. Nobody can enter unless you say so. This is your place. What details do you notice about your place? Where are you? What is the view? What colors do you see? What smells? What sounds? Who is there with you? How do you feel in this special place that is designed for you?

6. Now, find a relaxing place to sit or lie down, in this safe place, that is all the way yours. Make yourself comfortable. Look around and notice more details about your surroundings.

7. Take a deep breath and invite your intuition. Let go of any preconceived thoughts and let your intuition come into your place and visit you. It may take any of a million forms. Perhaps your intuition comes in as an animal, as a spirit, as a person, as a shimmery shadow or perhaps it is a presence; something you cannot see, but you know is there. Take a few moments to let this emerge.

8. When you know your intuition is in this place with you, say 'Hello'. Find some way to communicate with your intuition. It may not speak, but it may move, or send messages to you. It may show you symbols or point at something in your safe place. Ask your intuition if it has anything it would like to communicate to you right now.

9. Spend a few moments listening to what your intuition is communicating. It may be by a feeling that you experience, or it may be by something your intuition indicates to you by words or movements. Whatever it is, accept and remember it. You also might not sense anything right now. That is OK. It will come to you, perhaps later in the day or tomorrow. No rush.

10. Now it is time to say thank your intuition and say goodbye. Leave your wonderful safe place and return to where you are sitting. Take three deep breaths and let the image and the feeling of this place fade back into the background, in the knowledge that you can come back to it any time you want. Take your time, and where you are ready, open your eyes.

Intuition Workout

Now you know what coherence (a balanced, centered state that allows you to easily access your intuition) feels like, and now you have met your intuition, you can begin to expand both coherence and intuition in your life. Begin a conversation with your intuition while you are waiting in line at the grocery story. Ask it to sit on your shoulder while you move through your day. Ask it for an opinion on a dilemma you are facing. Play a game with it, like tossing a ball back and forth. The more intimate you get with your intuition, the easier you will be able to call upon it for guidance through tough phases in your life.